Greek-born but Paris-trained Cyprien Katsaris may well be the most dazzling and innovative of all living virtuosos. Having recorded for many labels (his way with the finale of Chopin’s Second Sonata is among the most wickedly provocative performances on record), he has since formed his label “Piano 21”, allowing him the freedom to pursue and explore a vast range of repertoire, much of it uncongenial to more commercially minded companies. And here, pride of place must go to four out of eight CDs devoted to Liszt. In the B minor Sonata, taken from a live 1973 recital, Katsaris is musically intrepid as he is technically blinding. Headstrong he may be but his performance blazes with passion and an elemental virtuosity that lesser pianists can only envy. He is as incense-laden as the most ardent Catholic could with in the “Benediction” and in all four Mephisto Waltzes (he resists Leslie Howard’s admirable completion to No 4), he shows a total empathy with Liszt’s satanic frolics. There are lavish embellishments in five of the Hungarian Rhapsodies that would surely have won Liszt’s plaudits and time and again Katsaris takes you out of a comfort zone to set your mind and senses reeling. His performance of the Second Concerto is the most spine-tingling on record and yet, even more remarkably, Katsaris is no less attuned to the dark-hued austerity of works such as Unstern!, Nuages gris and the hair-rising devilry at the heart of the Trauervorspiel und Trauermarsch (was Liszt, as once Blake considered Milton, of the devil’s party without knowing it, the reverse side of the religious coin?). Again, you are left in awe at the overflowing cornucopia of Katsaris’s gifts when you hear him in the Beethoven-Liszt symphony transcriptions (on independent label Piano Classics). For in music where Beethoven’s originals are unclouded by excess or extravagance, the playing is enough to have made even Horowitz wonder at such engulfing but taut and disciplined brilliance.
Liszt apart, there are further marvels in Katsaris’s Mozart, Schubert and, most entertainingly, in his DVD tour of Latin America, Live in Shanghai in 2007. Whether in Peru, Paraguay, Brazil, Cuba, Argentina or Mexico, he tells us, as in the subtitle of his concert, that “music knows no frontiers”. True, some of the music is of the Christmas-cracker variety, but when you turn to Villa-Lobos’s Alma Brasileira and most of all a Piazzolla selection, you are hearing music of genuine wit and sophistication. Katsaris’s romp through Ernesto Nazareth’s Odeon and verbal commentary and asides make you realise that he is, among so much else, a born cabaret artist. Amazingly, he has an innate understanding of music where there is no division between “serious” and “popular” idioms; a heady combination of café, folk, gaucho and Afro-American rhythm and melody.
In Viennese classics, Katsaris has less opportunity to flex a gypsy abandon that recalls his one-time mentor Georges Cziffra, yet he is never less than personal and engaging. I would not class his Mozart with, say, Kempff, Curzon or Perahia, who achieve a different subtlety, refinement and tonal chiaroscuro. Yet it is hard to resist his effervescence in the K382 Rondo or in his sampling of six cadenzas for K175 (four by Mozart, two by Katsaris). In Schubert’s Ländler, Katsaris is all charm and affection, and if he is more salonish than devotional in the B flat Sonata, he excels in three Schubert-Liszt transcriptions, where he confirms Liszt’s belief that Schubert was “the most poetic of all composers”.
All in all, these records, in all their infinite variety, are a testament to an endless range and brio. Cyprien Katsaris’s is a unique voice, serious, provocative, mischievous and compelling, a vivid and extraordinary example of recreative genius.
Gramophone (United Kingdom), March 2012
P21 044-N
Brahms, Sonata for Two Pianos in F minor, op. 34 b
Schumann, Piano Quintet in E flat major, op. 44 arranged for piano four hands by Clara Schumann
This recording brings together two major works from the history of romantic chamber music. It embraces Robert Schumann, the composer, Clara, his transcriber and indefatigable performer of his work, and Johannes Brahms, their intimate friend, revisiting in these piano arrangements their masterpieces: Schumann’s Quintet op. 44 and Brahms’ Quintet op. 34. Whereas we may already be familiar with the Sonata in F minor, the two-piano version of Brahms’ Quintet for piano and strings, the four-handed version of Robert Schumann’s Quintet may prove to be a discovery. Arranged by Clara Schumann just after the composer’s death, this work bears witness to the importance in the 19th century of the practice of four-hand piano works as a driver of musical progress.
P21 037-N
With this second “Piano Rarities” album, Cyprien Katsaris honours an outpost of the French School little heeded on disc or in concert. True, Debussy, Ravel, the group of Six and Messiaen and Boulez symbolise the renewal of musical aesthetics, especially in writing for the piano, but there are others like Déodat de Séverac, Albert Lavignac, Noël and Jean Gallon and Simone Plé who presented us with subtle, expressive works that express wondrously that peculiarly French amalgam of allure and sustained emotion. This album offers up the sarcastic humour of Jean Wiener, the utter finesse of Jean-Michel Damase’s writing and the charm of pieces by Lean-Jacques Laubry and René Berthelot. Placing these with contemporary compositions by Stéphane Blet, Yves Claoué, Michel Sogny and the young composer Jacob Tardien, Cyprien Katsaris demonstrates the enormous diversity of the current musical language. However, it is with the five Etudes of Jean-Amedée Lefroid de Méreaux, here receiving their first recording anywhere, that this album will whet the appetites of melomanes and pianists alike. The improvisation on themes by French film music composers offered by Cyprien Katsaris at a concert in Japan provides a dazzling highlight to this passionate homage to French music.
L’extraordinaire talent du pianiste Cyprien Katsaris, tôt salué par des maîtres aussi avérés qu’Olivier Messiaen (« technique d’acier, fougue, force et autorité, brillance ») ou György Cziffra, illumine trois disques récents, aussi remarquables par la variété du programme que par la qualité transcendante de l’interprétation. Délicatesse mozartienne, virtuosité lisztienne et douceur schubertienne sont des données qui relèvent ici de l’incongru, tant l’artiste sait modeler le métal musical en usant simultanément de ces trois caractères pour la totalité de son immense répertoire. Tout au long de sa carrière, cet étonnant virtuose se sera ainsi attaché à chercher, au sein de ses œuvres de prédilection, les couleurs harmoniques, raretés mélodiques et superpositions contrapuntiques les plus inattendues, sans jamais mettre en péril l’unité formelle et la cohérence structurelle voulues par les compositeurs. Dût-il parfois, pour cela, dérouter une partie de ses auditeurs, sans doute afin de plus sûrement les séduire. En cela, il reste le glorieux héritier de Franz Liszt, grand pianiste et grand compositeur, mais aussi incomparable improvisateur chez qui l’invention ne brutalisait jamais la forme. En ce temps de grave crise du disque classique, par ailleurs, il est réconfortant de vérifier que le label « Piano 21 », créé par Katsaris, le 1er janvier 2001 (dix ans déjà !) offre un panel si complet et si divers du répertoire créé au cours des deux derniers siècles pour le roi des instruments.
www.leducation-musicale.com (France), novembre 2011
P21 043-N
Frédéric Chopin is a composer to whom Cyprien Katsaris has returned time and again throughout his career, notably with his recordings of the complete Sonatas, Ballades, Preludes, Waltzes, Scherzos and Polonaises and with his memorable “Homage to Chopin” recital at the Carnegie Hall on 17 October 1999, the 150th anniversary of the composer’s death. There have also been numerous concerts in which the Franco-Polish composer’s works have featured. This new recording bears witness to Cyprien Katsaris’ devotion to the prodigious pianist and composer. Distilled from various recitals, the programme comprises a set of universally loved pieces garnished with lesser-known compositions and some rare transcriptions.
